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May 2008 Issue
By Jenna L. Consolo
When I was eight years old, my mother bought a pair of red sling-back three-inch heels. I remember them distinctly because she never wore high heels, especially red ones. My mother was a martyr. Her selfish side, if she ever had one, died on the cross of labor and delivery in 1973 when I was born, the first of her nine children. My mother wore sensible shoes and often times no shoes at all. She was literally barefoot and pregnant most of my life. She was a short, round mother. Round with child, and round with the weight of carrying the child before.
Secretly, I wished my mother wasn’t so plain. I wished for a pretty, stylish mother. My mother wore homemade muumuus sewn from bland calicos. She rarely cut her frizzy hair and her cosmetic collection consisted of a jar of foundation, a compact of blush, and a Maybelline Great Lash mascara which she only wore on Sundays. Sometimes I was embarrassed by her, and I was torn between those feelings and my feelings of loyalty to her.
I loved it when those red shoes came into the house. It was a sign that maybe she could be like other mothers. She wore them only a few times to church and I remember how proud I felt. But they were impractical, and Sunday after Sunday the red shoes didn’t appear.
Though I focused too often on what I wished she was, it wasn’t lost on me how I wanted to be like her when I was a mother myself. She was remarkable. She baked and decorated artistic birthday cakes. She sewed matching Easter dresses for the four girls with hand-smocked pinafores, and all of our prom and wedding dresses. She knitted our Christmas stockings, and our hats and mittens, and each year she made us each a personalized Christmas ornament.
She made flannel board stories, and finger puppets out of garden gloves. She was always sewing or crafting or creating something.
My mother read to us. She believed in bringing us together through stories and books. We would gather in a bedroom and she would read us chapters from classic children’s literature.
She sang to us, songs about Jesus and songs from Mother Goose. She taught me to clean, sew, knit, and how to make a meal out of nothing in the kitchen.
My mother saved herself for last in everything. With so little money and so many children, the clothing budget had to be stretched very thin. She bought that bland calico with what remaining dollars existed. I can picture her standing sleepy-eyed at the stove in her nightgown, cooking pancakes for us. She would pour that batter over and over, serving children second helpings, until there was none left for her. She took the meat that no one else wanted at the dinner table. She baked cookies for us, which we shared with the neighbor kids, who didn’t have moms at home baking cookies. That was the biggest distinction I started to see as I got older.
My mother became beautiful to me when I became a mother myself. With the birth of each of my four children, I have become more keenly aware of her sacrifice as she reared us. She truly was the example of beauty that I needed all along.
I am a mother who watches her weight and wears makeup, even on Tuesdays. But I don’t consider any of that to be what makes me beautiful. What I am proud of is that every batch of dinner rolls I bake is my mother’s recipe. What I haven’t forgotten is that every time I sing “A, you’re Adorable” to my babies, she was the one who first sang it to me.
So much of what I teach my children now, I learned from my mother. I was caught off guard recently when I came across a photograph of me in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake I’d made. I stared at my hands in the picture. It was shocking. They were her hands. My facial features favor my father’s side, but those were unmistakably my mother’s hands. I am grateful that she gave them to me, and taught me how to use them.
As my life as a woman and mother has progressed, I feel as though I can more fully see my mother and the gift she has been to me. We are quite different women, but I honor her as my mother and very first mentor. She was wise enough to know that red high-heeled sling-backs don’t bring the rich beauty that she desired for her life. Neither do vanities of makeup or chests of jewels. She settled into practical shoes and got to work, waiting as I learned that for myself.
